1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to short messaging systems. More particularly, it relates to prepaid billing of short message services.
2. Background of Related Art
Prepaid voice services exist. In a prepaid voice scenario, as part of the establishment of a telephone call, a service queries a database for a particular subscriber to determine if there is at least a given amount of funds available to pay for a call about to be made. In such a prepaid voice scenario, the ultimate cost of the desired telephone call is not known at that time, because the caller may not know the exact length of time that they would like to speak. Thus, a ‘minimum’ cost of the telephone call given the location of the called party (e.g., for a 3 minute call) may be determined, and compared to the remaining balance in the caller's service account. If there is sufficient money remaining to pay for at least the minimum cost of the telephone call (e.g., to pay for a minimum 3 minute call), then the call is allowed to go through and be established.
In the conventional prepaid voice system, when the subscriber's account has been exhausted or nearly exhausted, the subscriber is initially warned about the dwindling account balance. Ultimately, if the account balance is not replenished in time, the telephone call will be terminated due to lack of funds.
Conventionally, when a called party does not answer a telephone call, a voice message may be left in a voice mailbox. However, since the telephone call was not answered, there typically is no tariffing or cost applied to the subscriber's account. While this may be advantageous to the subscriber, the wireless carrier service does not recover costs with respect to that voice message.
Nevertheless, while prepayment for voice telephone calls has been accomplished, existing technologies have not applied the concepts of pre-payment to the world of short messaging (e.g., Internet messaging delivery services) as have prepaid wireless voice & calling cards. The lack of pre-payment service for messaging increases the possibility for fraudulent billing with respect to payment collections, particularly with respect to the high demand for wireless information services.
There is a need for an architecture and method for providing prepaid messaging services.